﻿My favourite paintings are the ones that subvert your expectations. The kind of paintings that
seem pretty mundane on the surface, but that can reveal an incredible amount of meaning if
you’re willing to dig into them and engage with them. These paintings are what make me
love art history and make me do these videos. This painting definitely falls into this category.
The year 1789 is known for being the year of the Storming of the Bastille and of the beginning
of the French Revolution in Paris, but on the other side of the English Channel, in London,
1789 is the year J.M.W. Turner joined the Royal Academy of Arts
at the age of 14. A child prodigy, he would make this self-portrait at 10 years old.
However, portraits are not what Turner would become known for.
William Turner often depicted maritime scenes: boats, waves, clouds. For example,
the very first oil painting he ever exhibited, Fishermen at Sea, depict men in turbulent waters
at night. The only source of light comes from the moon and a dimly lit lantern on one of the boats.
The fishermen are surrounded by darkness and they’re struggling at the same time to
keep their ship afloat. There’s a clear contrast between the silent
and calm landscape at the horizon and the violence of the sea.
Turner would later create more of these types of energetic paintings depicting the threat of nature
at sea, the quintessential example of the Sublime. If you don’t know what the sublime is,
you can check out the video I made on the subject.
But what really fascinates me about Turner is how he depicted the Sublime, the violence of nature,
the waves, the clouds in an almost abstract manner. Keep in mind, we’re at the beginning of
the 19th century and Impression Sunrise is still half a century away. Elements of modernism are
clearly on display here from Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps made in 1812,
to Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth made 30 years later where Turner would comment:
“I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like;
I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; I was lashed for four hours,
and I did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it if I did.”
I know I’ve said in the past that Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe is considered to be the first modern
painting, which it widely is, but isn’t that hard to believe when looking at Sunrise, with a Boat
between Headlands, or Sun Setting over a Lake, both made over 2 decades before Manet’s painting.
Turner’s art was radically different, but keep in mind that his surroundings
also radically changed in the span of a couple of years. The Industrial Revolution was at its
peak while Turner was evolving as an artist and, as many innovators did, he saw an opportunity.
In the face of rapidly developing technology, the rise of manufacture in the British landscape
and the shift in the very way we organized as a society, Turner started painting this new reality.
Here’s another moonlit seen made by Turner, Keelmen in coals by moonlight. If the major
part of this artwork is quite conventional, the bottom right is a very telling illustration of the
industrialization of England. Coal is being loaded into boats by dozens of working men. The area is
engulfed in dark smoke. To be able to see through the smoke, streaks of fire silhouette the workers.
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway is another great example of Turner’s depiction of
the Industrial Revolution. The composition is a blend of Nature, Industry and Force,
contrasting the forces of nature with the forces of industry. The only industrialized element of
the composition is the train heading towards the viewer. Its power and dynamism is reinforced by
its diagonal orientation. It’s imposing itself in the landscape, surrounded by people on a boat,
a gathering on the shore, a stone bridge in the background, a farmer with its cattle or
horses and, famously, a small hare on the tracks running away from the train.
All these elements blend in such harmony that they’re sometimes even hard to make out, but
the train, however, is its own thing. This means that these technological innovations are bursting
into the world loudly and powerfully. Wether that’s a good thing or not is up to the viewer.
Now, this finally brings us to the painting I’ve been
wanting to talk about since we started this video.
The waters are calm, the sun is setting, the moon is rising. This setting is much more
appeasing than some of Turner’s more dramatic works. It’s known as The Fighting Téméraire,
and, when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839, everybody knew what the Téméraire
was. The Téméraire was a 60m long ship, armed with 98 cannons, built in 1798, which covered
itself with glory after beating both French and Spanish enemies at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Here the Téméraire is pictured, not fighting, but being escorted to its ultimate end. The full
title of the painting is The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838.
The Téméraire was sold for its parts. During the actual event, when it was tugged away,
it didn’t have its masts anymore and was basically just a carcass to be torn apart. However, Turner
decided to present the Téméraire in all its past glory and dignity. He’s not presenting the facts
of the event, this is not a historical document; he’s presenting an idea, he’s telling a story;
and this story is a very compelling one. This is the story of a ship, made of wood and powered
by wind, and this ship is at the end of its life. It’s being dragged on the water to its
final destination by a new generation of ships, those ones made of metal and powered by coal.
This depicts the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.
And what I like most about the story Turner is telling here is that there
is no moral prescriptions. He’s not saying that industrialization is bad,
but he’s not necessarily saying it’s good neither. The ghost ship could
be interpreted as an homage to the past, to a glorification of what Great Britain used to be.
The tugboat could be interpreted as a dark, gritty and dirty metal aberration, one which
contrasts itself with nature, its power and implied noise being at odds with the calm waters
and the sunset. However, this could also be interpreted as the sign of the rise of
Great Britain and how the power of these boats is such that it can singlehandedly replace the past.
I don’t know what Turner’s opinion on the matter was and I don’t really think that
matters. The story he’s telling here is not supposed to give you answers,
it’s not supposed to give you Turner’s answers, it’s supposed to ask you questions.
The society Turner lived in was changing, it was changing radically and Turner was simply asking:
“Is this change for the better? What are we leaving behind? Is it worth it?”
And you know what I love the most about Turner’s Temeraire story? It’s that these questions,
which normally would have been exclusive to the 1800s, are now asked to us, centuries later.